With so many winterized cottages, cabins, chalets, and yurts (yes, yurts) across Canada, cottage "season" can be a thing of the past. This winter, keep your hair smelling like campfire even when there's snow on the ground with this list of the coziest and coolest all-Canadian getaways.

I've gone pretty deep into my archives to see what I can find, I've featured photos from abandoned insane asylums, vacant hospitals, abandoned houses that seem as though the owners just up and left and many other derelict and creepy old buildings.

Just as shape, consistency and timing of our bowel movements are important indicators as to the health of our digestive system, so too is the colour of our poo. Brown, red, white or green, these colours tell us much about not only the foods that we eat, but whether you're absorbing important nutrients or have a bowel condition.

Taking a look at your poop before you flush allows you be your own health detective. You can even potentially catch harmful conditions before they progress, such as parasite infection, leaky gut syndrome or even colon cancer.

Lionfish may be one of the most truly beautiful creatures you'll encounter when you're scuba diving or snorkelling in tropical water. There's nothing wrong with lionfish where they're indigenous -- the Indian and Pacific Ocean. But about 20 years ago a few started to appear in the Caribbean.

Once the furniture sets are settled and the walls are painted, it's time for someone to decorate the bare walls with eye catching and interesting photography prints. When thinking about decorating your walls, the first thing that comes to mind is a painting, a family portrait and wallpaper.

I believe we are in full control of our choices and that our actions, in response to what fate offers us, matter. We are here to learn lessons and the hard decisions we have to make are what helps us grow as humans. Our destiny is not something we can sit by and let happen to us.

I like to consider it "capturing the present state of the past" -- the rooms remain today (for the most part) as they were in the past, the day the last person walked out the door. Behind closet doors, inside dresser drawers, on top of dressers and especially in attics or basement, you can really find some odd and freaky things in an abandoned house. It may sound odd to a person who either has never heard of photographing abandoned houses, or to someone who has never actually been inside one but there is most definitely beauty in decay.

After being imprisoned for over a decade, Omar Khadr is now free on bail. In his first public appearance and media scrum, we witnessed not a mean-spirited radicalized militant, but rather, an articulate humbled young man, and in his own words, someone eager to "prove to [Canadians] that I'm more than what they thought of me."

My children and I immigrated to Canada in 2010 as refugees. When we arrived, I was so happy that my kids were in a safe country. In Zimbabwe I remember not being able to cry or find comfort in anyone, because everyone was experiencing their own share of pain and shock. So in April of 2010, after being released from the most recent lock-up, I took my kids at midnight and headed for the border knowing that if I was caught I would be burned alive and killed. Even though I was living with the uncertainty of how my immigration hearing would pan out, watching my kids embrace Canadian culture strengthened me when I was at my weakest point.

There's always going to be "the next hottest trend" trying to sell you on how you can have the best mind blowing, knock your hipster-socks off kind of sex. You know, the good-good kind of get-down. Yet, what is the actual key to having a great sex life? Eating more kale? Practicing vaginal weightlifting? Cultivating perfectly pruned pubes?

On any day, passing an abandoned building can be creepy, but there is something about seeing abandoned buildings in the Fall, specifically around Halloween that cranks the creepy factor high! Here, just in time for Halloween are 13 Photos of Creepy Abandoned Places.

Elephants are being commoditized by a select few clever craftsmen that make all the profit, while the masses are being led to believe that Gods will be happy. People need to wake up to the reprehensible fact that in the guise of religion and culture India's heritage animal and one of the gentlest sentient beings of our planet is being tortured for human entertainment and profit.

I have often thought it would be cool to own a yoga studio and as I type this blog, I am actually sitting in my very own studio gulping down a protein shake. How did it happen? Well that's a good question because it happened in one just one week, (well sort of...).

This past December, I visited some of the most prestigious temples in a place called Trishur where captive male tuskers adorned in glamorous ornaments are paraded on the streets to the rhythm of traditional drum beats and horns. It was gut-wrenching to witness the plight of the captive elephants.

Living conditions on some reserves are now so dismal that they are routinely likened to those of the Third World. Needless to say, youth literacy and education have not thrived in this environment. Working together will not only hasten progress, but elevate the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Ontario to a new level of friendship and respect.

Like many Muslim-Americans in a post 9/11 world, Adam, Sheikh and Abdullah have been made to increasingly feel like they're on the outside. Unwilling to accept such alienation, the trio set out on a simple proposition: they wanted their fellow Americans to "Meet a Muslim Person."

TVO's first commissioned drama series, Hard Rock Medical, provides a fresh and entertaining look at the unique challenges of delivering healthcare in Northern Ontario. Hard Rock Medical follows the lives of eight medical students, their struggles to succeed, and the obstacles they face in adapting to practising rural medicine and living in the North.

Meet a diverse group of self-identified Muslims and read stories of why they choose to become vegetarians or vegans. I hope you will be inspired by what you read and consider adding vegetarian and vegan options to your diet.

My first glimpse into the slaughterhouse industry came when I read Fast Food Nation and discovered how animals where treated in factory farms. I was horrified to say the least. Interestingly enough, the idea of Muslims being vegetarian or vegans has prompted some debate.

My son, Derrick was one of thousands of Canadian youth who went without food for 30 hours this past weekend, as part of World Vision's 30 Hour Famine. In school hallways and church basements from Toronto to Medicine Hat, kids banded together to put up posters, plan activities, and talk about what hunger feels like.

The 10 year anniversary of "the war of our generation" has brought back from the shadows the actors of the momentous events of 2003. Even our current Prime Minister, has admitted publicly that he was wrong when he supported the idea of our military joining the USA into war. I just hope that he will not make yet another colossal mistake while in power.